An experimental, 2D physics-based take on the collect-a-thon genre! note
- HERO OF THE STARS AND SKY
However, as the story unravels, things aren't as simple as they seem...
RUBATO is a physics-based 2D collect-a-thon platformer, developed & published by 'dconn', with Headcannon of Sonic Mania fame handling the console porting and publishing. It released on March 20, 2026 for PC (via Steam), Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, & Xbox Series X|S.
Previews: Release Date Trailer
, Launch Trailer
Rubato contains the following tropes:
- All the Worlds Are a Stage: Mystery Toilet X is a mash-up of everything that came before, only with more obstacles, tougher enemies, and absolutely no checkpoints. Good luck.
- Anvil on Head: Tokki unleashes many, many of these on a Space Police soldier who threatens Luna."A BRO IS ALWAYS ANVIL."
- Arc Number: 2012, which is also the year Gangnam Style was released, and that's no coincidence. Played for Drama later in the story when it's revealed that 2012 was the year that the world ended, with Gangam Style being one of the only artifacts left of humanity.
- Arc Symbol: The sky, which is used as a visual shorthand for self-realization and enlightenment. After coming to grips with her past and mastering her Heroic Willpower, Nico's soul is often overlaid with the sky.
- "Balls" Gag: Plentiful. Tony purchases the "cursed" pool balls in a container labeled "Ballz", the main abundant collectibles are called Balls, the third weapon you unlock is the BallsGun, and once it's upgraded you can use it to "shoot your sticky balls everywhere". Heck, Rubato himself becomes a ball for one sub-area.
- Big Bad: "Higher Management", an Eldritch Abomination employed by GSSAI Corp to develop new products for whatever strange business they employ. Their current goal is to make reproduce-able, immortal soldiers patterned after Rubato and Tony.
- Big, Thin, Short Trio: Bernie, Tony, and Mikey, respectively.
- Bittersweet Ending: Tony, Hugo, Bernie, Mikey and Maia all defeat Higher Management with the help of Rubato/Nico, but the frog is permanently killed by Higher Management in retaliation. While each character vows to live for a higher purpose now that GSSAI Corp has stopped paying attention to Earth, the The Stinger implies that Earth is still on the proverbial chopping block, as an unknown voice working for the corp agrees to Earth's "scheduled demolition". The only solace is that Rubato may have still reformed given a small post-credits scene, but it's kept ambiguous.
- Bleak Level: Area 4, The Forest, has its silly moments but is overall rather melancholic compared to what came before it. Rest assured- it gets darker from there.
- Bonus Dungeon: Getting all 132 Planet Bits, and completing the game at least once, grants you access to Mystery Toilet X, which counts as its own post-game area. Hopefully you've mastered your abilities by now, because you're going to need all of them.
- Cerebus Syndrome: The game begins as a wacky offbeat comedy and ends as a melancholic journey into self-realization.
- Death Is Cheap: If Rubato dies during gameplay, he respawns at the last checkpoint with a few Balls lost, which he can re-collect in a small bag if he makes his way back to the same place before he dies again. This is later Deconstructed. Rubato and Tony's ability to reform themselves leads Higher Management to view them as potential valuable assets, wishing to use one of them as a template for mass-produced, immortal soldiers.
- Defeat Means Friendship:
- Justified in King's case; he mistook Rubato for the Space Police at first and was only trying to defend his bakery.
- Hugo is the supposed boss of Area 3, but he's a completely idiotic Ditzy Genius with No Social Skills, so actually beating him is trivial. Once Rubato and co. make it out of the city, he tags along as the Sixth Ranger in spite of everyone in the party thinking he sucks.
- Degraded Boss: Starting from Area 4, the player will encounter larger versions of the generic rabbit enemies whose sprites appear to be modified from Area 2's boss, Weaponized Tokki. They are of course weaker and go down in a single hit like most other enemies, though.
- Developer's Foresight:
- Some common enemies appear in the hospital lobby should you choose to visit it— but on the chance you've never defeated a type of enemy, they will be absent.
- At the end of Area 4, Higher Management normally comments on your total death count up to that point. If you've never died at all except for the required reset in the Bakery, they will instead remark that Rubato hasn't died "too much recently".
- If the player visits Tokki's shop after defeating his weaponized form in Area 2 but before unlocking Area 4, Luna will be operating the shop in his place while he's out of commission.
- Endgame+: Reloading your save file after completing the final area reverts the timeline to before you ever entered it in the first place, but now with "post-game" content unlocked. This is a logical necessity since Rubato is Killed Off for Real in the game's ending.
- Foreshadowing: When Mist tries to comfort Luna after the boss fight of Chapter 2, she says to "always keep [your] chin up". When she says this, her Voice Grunting momentarily switches to Tony's, hinting at their connection.
- Furry Confusion: Averted in an unusual way. The game's non-human cast is largely composed of Funny Animals- except for the frogs, who aren't anthropomorphic and can't speak. Rubato is no exception, and the only thing truly setting him apart from the "regular" frogs in the game is that he's effectively a human soul stuffed into a frog's body.
- Genre Mashup: Primarily a collect-a-thon platformer, but with divergent gameplay segments throughout and plenty of physics involved. Later on, it becomes a dramatic Visual Novel with Cosmic Horror elements.
- Gender Bender: Nico is referred to with feminine pronouns, while their reincarnated form as Rubato is referred to with masculine ones.
- Gotta Catch 'Em All: A certain number of Planet Bits are required in order to enter the boss room for each world.
- The Goomba: The small dumplings in the Bakery. They jump at you slowly for 1 damage and are defeated by grabbing them and throwing them at anything.
- Heterosexual Life-Partner: Tony and Hugo, as the two of them attempted to create a "universal cure" for human injuries for GSSAI Co. and thus help humanity recover from the disaster of 2012. Except, it's slightly subverted, in that it's strongly implied Hugo has romantic feelings for Tony which may or may not be reciprocated.
- Identity Amnesia: Tony and Hugo suffer from this due to events prior to the game's story, to the point where they become completely different people and Tony doesn't recognize Maia, his own daughter. We learn about what actually happened in the late game, during their playable Backstory.
- Level Ate: The first level Rubato gets thrown into is the King's Bakery.
- Mood Whiplash: Like you'd never believe. The game's own description sums it up well enough:It gets silly. It gets serious. Really concerningly serious. Uh. Is the guy who made this game okay..?
- Multipurpose Tongue: Being a frog, Rubato can use his tongue to lick, carry, & manipulate certain objects.
- Overly Long Gag: If you choose to take the elevator in the Bakery, you'll be watching it slowly rise for more than two minutes.
- Placeholder Repeat Collectible: Planet Bits that you've already collected appear grayscale and give you a few Balls instead.
- Press X to Die: There's a dedicated button ('O' on keyboards and clicking either the left or right stick on controllers) that can be held down to make Rubato explode on the spot. In The Bakery, this feature is introduced to the player as something to use in case they get softlocked in some way (i.e. they find themselves in an inescapable pit).
- Punny Name: "Rubato" sounds like "ribbit-o" if you say it fast enough.
- Purposely Overpowered: The Jet Engine, which allows you fly in any direction for a limited time. You don't get it until you clear Area 4, and the final area is built around you having it. Aside from that, it's only useful for getting any Planet Bits you missed for 100% Completion, and for taking on the Bonus Dungeon.
- Racing Minigame: Dumpling Dude hosts a race in each of the first three areas. You get a Planet Bit for each one that you win.
- Revisit Reward: Some Planet Bits are locked behind items you don't get until defeating the area boss, or even clearing a later area.
- Rocket Jump: Rubato can aim the Rocket Launcher at the ground to gain a bit of extra height, and this can be exploited to obtain a few out-of-reach Planet Bits before actually unlocking the item that the game expects you to use.
- Rule of Funny: The game has an incredibly irreverent sense of humor, with multiple things given Stylistic Suck purely to enhance the humor. This includes multiple NPCs being bitcrushed 3D models, or characters snapping between idle poses.
- Shout-Out:
- There are several nods to Gangnam Style, some subtle, some... less so.
- An NPC during a Stealth-Based Mission suggests hiding in a trash can because "metal gear is better for sneaking than cardboard".
- One sub-area has a mini-game about destroying blocks with the help of the (legally distinct) Guy Craft.
- Collecting a Planet Bit may randomly display the text "But, do you remember how you got it?", a reference to Betterified VI: Bestified.
- There's a world map NPC who looks like Hugo (but isn't) and is drawn in the style of EarthBound.
- The Forest includes a survival "horror" sub-area. The objective? "Find my 8 pagers"note .
- The "DOILUS STAGE" is alluded to by yet another NPC in Maia's act during the Forest's "hell" sequence.
- In one of the visual novel-styled portions of the sequence following the player's encounter with Higher Management in Area 4, one of the text boxes features the default quick menu layout of Ren'Py, a popular game engine for visual novels. This element is purely cosmetic, however, and cannot be interacted with even when playing the game with mouse and keyboard.
- Tony's raid on GSSAI HQ swings between multiple nods, echoing the aesthetic beats of Jenova and the Shinra jailbreak, the FPS combat of Killer7, and even the loading screen from Silent Hill 1.
- The entire stretch after Area 4 through the end of the game is heavily laden with imagery and symbolism directly evoking Neon Genesis Evangelion, specifically the finale of the TV series.
- Silent Protagonist: Subverted. While Rubato can't speak, their inner thoughts are semi-frequently voiced throughout the game. They still have to pantomime to the other characters in order to communicate certain ideas, but otherwise they're fully capable of articulating their thoughts. It helps that they used to be human.
- Stylistic Suck: Some dialogue portraits are drawn very crudely to indicate that character's bewilderment or nervousness.
- Sudden Downer Ending: As the player, you can invoke this if you choose to "give up" (the replacement for the standard "quit" button) during the hell sequence at the end of the Forest, or at any point in Area 5. There are multiple bad endings depending on the context, and it's all but directly stated that they lead to The End of the World as We Know It because Rubato is no longer there to fix things. Thankfully, this doesn't affect your save file and you can try again.
- Token Non-Human: Of the four main characters, Rubato is a frog. At least, for most of the game.
- World of Funny Animals: Other than Rubato himself, there's a number of NPCs that are anthropomorphic animals (notably Tokki and Luna). For an unspecified reason, only frogs are unable to talk like humans in this world, which is why Nico was reincarnated into one by GSSAI Corp- so they couldn't protest against their predicament.
- Wreaking Havok: Physics play a large role in the game's platforming and level design, with many setpieces involving some kind of unique movement or physics toy to play with. On one hand, some levels offer unique challenges, like transforming Rubato into a ball or putting them into a UFO. On the other, some levels just have Rubato blowing up everything in sight because it's really damn hilarious.